Jimmy Breslin Quotes

I busted out of the place in a hurry and went to a saloon and drank beer and said that for the rest of my life I'd never take a job in a place where you couldn't throw cigarette butts on the floor. I was hooked on this writing for newspapers and magazines.

- Jimmy Breslin

Some time ago, I made a basic decision about the way in which I was going to live the little of life available to me The idea was to place myself in the presence of only those people who give off the warm, friendly vibrations which soothe the coating on my nerves. Life never was long enough to provide time for enemies.

- Jimmy Breslin

If a man, for private profit, tears at the public news, does so with the impatience of one who thinks he actually owns the news you get, it is against the national interest.

- Jimmy Breslin

Speaks cheerful English and in the past has written this language with a paintbrush that talks.

- Jimmy Breslin

Don't try to tell Namath's people on First Avenue about Babe Ruth, because they don't even know the name. In fact, with the young, you can forget all of baseball. The sport is gone. But if you ever have seen Ruth, and then you see Namath, you know there is very little difference.

- Jimmy Breslin

Why something in the public interest such as television news can be fought over, like a chain of hamburger stands, eludes me.

- Jimmy Breslin

The trouble with Trump's father was that he was a totally naive man. He had no idea that you could buy the whole news reporting business in New York City with a return phone call.

- Jimmy Breslin

The professional arsonist builds vacant lots for money.

- Jimmy Breslin

The first funeral for Andrew Goodman was at night and it was a lot of work. To begin with they had to kill him.

- Jimmy Breslin

If you gather a lot of stuff, then you write it, write in scenes with dialogue. Somewhere in the middle, rising from all this research like strong metal towers, is your opinions.

- Jimmy Breslin

The only people I don't answer are bill collectors.

- Jimmy Breslin

Those of Manhattan are the brokers on Wall Street and they talk of people who went to the same colleges; those from Queens are margin clerks in the back offices and they speak of friends who live in the same neighborhood.

- Jimmy Breslin

Don't call me a journalist; I hate the word. It's pretentious!

- Jimmy Breslin

Politicians attend dinners at hotels with contractors. Bankers discuss interest rates at lunch.

- Jimmy Breslin

Donald Trump handles these nitwit reporters with a new and most disgraceful form of bribery.

- Jimmy Breslin

Politics, where fat, bald, disagreeable men, unable to be candidates themselves, teach a president how to act on a public stage.

- Jimmy Breslin

You get a little picture that reflects the whole. You can get readers interested in the life of one guy, and he can reflect the whole life around him. And it's a better picture than the politicians give you.

- Jimmy Breslin

The number one rule of thieves is that nothing is too small to steal.

- Jimmy Breslin

The financial people, who lead such dreary lives, believe what they read and see on television.

- Jimmy Breslin

When you stop drinking, you have to deal with this marvelous personality that started you drinking in the first place.

- Jimmy Breslin

Football is a game designed to keep coal miners off the streets.

- Jimmy Breslin

As far as getting publicity whenever he wants it, Trump is the white Al Sharpton.

- Jimmy Breslin

Never use your own money. Steal a good idea and say it's your own. Do anything to get publicity. Remember that everybody can be bought.

- Jimmy Breslin

A politician finds anything to do with racial problems far more frightening than a gun.

- Jimmy Breslin

Rage is the only quality which has kept me, or anybody I have ever studied, writing columns for newspapers.

- Jimmy Breslin

You can get some work, some jobs that will bore you until you're dead. So you better look for something that's got a little tingle to it.

- Jimmy Breslin

I don't know any other columnists, and I don't know what they do. I work the single! And nobody does what I do, anyway.

- Jimmy Breslin

I'm the best person ever to have a column in this business. There's never been anybody in my league.

- Jimmy Breslin

Newspapers are so boring. How can you read a newspaper that starts with a 51-word lead sentence?

- Jimmy Breslin

Trump survives by Corum's Law. This is a famous, well-tested theory and is named after Bill Corum, who once wrote sports for the Hearst papers when they were in New York.

- Jimmy Breslin

I played football. I played trumpet. I could draw.

- Jimmy Breslin

Media, the plural of mediocrity.

- Jimmy Breslin

Trump, in the crinkling of an eye, senses better than anyone the insecurity of people, that nobody knows whether anything is good or bad until they are told, and he is quite willing to tell them immediately.

- Jimmy Breslin

Complainant received immediate lacerations of the credibility.

- Jimmy Breslin

I became a copy boy. Not for long. I started writing stories.

- Jimmy Breslin

Pick up any newspaper in the morning. Count the words in the lead sentences. There will be at least 25 in all of them: Guaranteed. The writers just want to tell you how many degrees they have from this college or that university.

- Jimmy Breslin

Trump is larger than life.

- Jimmy Breslin